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Monday, April 25, 2016

Our Words Matter

Sunday night's #oklaed Twitter chat was one of the most emotional ones I have been a part of in a long time. I spent a lot of the time crying and being super confused!

The chat which was lead by my friend @MrP_tchr, check him out on Twitter by the way, was all about Math. He did an amazing job and really kept me encouraged even as I was crying my eyes out.

Math is the worst. I hate it. Math has always been a struggle for me. Many times when I'm sitting in staff meetings the topic of Math comes up and I shut down. My struggles with Math have always been around, which is ironic for the child of two accountants. Math is black and white. I live in the gray areas. However my struggles with Math came to explosive levels when my fifth grade math teacher, told me that I was never going to get it.

I believed her, and I believed that I was never going to get Math. And guess what...I never got Math. It is still a struggle for me, I can do the basics that I need to get by in life, but if my students come up to me and ask for help on their homework or projects, I can't do it.

My point in writing this isn't to make you feel sorry for me, because I'm doing pretty great. What I have to say is that what we say matters. We talk so much in education to our students about the power of their words, but I think we very rarely ever talk amongst ourselves as educators about the power of our words. Even if we do we think of it in the lenses of positive words. But the negative....I think those outlast the positive.

I'm sure that my teacher said many other positive things about me and towards me, but all I carry and I all I remember is those negative words. This had me thinking, what negative words have I spoken to my students? Even with that experience I try my best to only speak the positive around my students, however I'm human and that I make mistakes.

So how do we change this? How do we change the direction of our words? Today I set some goals for myself.

1. In each class to try to say a minimum of five positive things to the class as a whole.
2. In each class to try to say one positive thing directed towards individual students.
3. Each day try to find one student that needs a little bit more love and shower them with positive words.

No matter what you do. If you are an educator or involved in some other profession, your words better. Make them great and amazing words.